


what's the most you've ever lost?

by greatzodiac



Series: Armor-Piercing Bullets [1]
Category: Band of Brothers, Generation Kill, The Pacific (TV)
Genre: (it's just swearing really but they swear a lot), Alternate Universe - Assassins & Hitmen, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Explicit Language, F/F, Lena/John is shown in a flashback sequence, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-15
Updated: 2017-07-15
Packaged: 2018-12-02 09:48:55
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,090
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11506881
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/greatzodiac/pseuds/greatzodiac
Summary: The moral codes that contract killers follow may vary from person to person, but overall they follow the same code; one that is the same from faction to faction. For instance, Rule #9 states that you must not kill someone of a differing faction.A recent clause, however, states that if paid a certain amount of money, the rule is null.Rule #10 states that falling in love with a member of any faction, including your own, is expressly forbidden. This can result in termination, but that can mean anything the faction leader wants it to mean. It can mean dismissal of your current position, or death.Rule #11 is to have fun and be yourself.Vera Keller and Lena Riggi observe the optional Rule #11, must go through with Rule #9, and they have no say in ignoring Rule #10.





	what's the most you've ever lost?

Being an assassin comes with a set of rules, believe it or not. Some people prefer the term "hitman" or "hired killer," and some like "contract killer" better. They all mean the same thing in the end: killing a target for money.

The rules are simple, and sometimes some people come up with their own moral codes to follow, if they are not detailed in the basic rules. Some rules, as stated in the code and moral codes people have adopted, are as follows:

 

  1.      A clean gun is a happy gun.



 

"You see all that mess built up in there?" Lena asked, pointing. "That's why the shot was fucked up. You know better."

"Yes, ma'am," the man said, going to clean it right away. Lena, though by no means his superior, was deadly, and he was scared.

He knew that a dirty gun could lead to a lot of malfunctions and accuracy, which is what happened and led to Lena having to cut the target off when they started to run and bloodied the whole place up. It caused a slight pay cut on his part, and a couple dollars thrown Lena's way for the quick fix, but it was still an issue, and Lena needed to make sure it was remedied.

 

  1.      All contracts must be carried out unless the person that has hired you rescinds, and we return the money in full. If it is not carried out by you, and you alone, you will receive a cut in pay.



 

See above.

 

  1.      No contracts can be accepted targeting any current members of United States Congress, no matter how bad they may be. However, the contract may be accepted immediately following their departure from office. Please double check all accounts.



 

Not one of Vera's finer moments. Who knew the guy had an identical twin in Congress?

 

  1.      No women, no children. The only exception is if the woman is notoriously evil; evidence must be provided.


  1.      There are different factions, so please do not interfere with another faction's work. You can tell the difference by armband colors if you spot them while they're working. Please use the database you have access to should you need to double check.



 

Minor accident on Lena's part. Not a big deal. Everyone was reimbursed in the end and there were no hard feelings. Brad Colbert still has the scar on his ass to show for the event.

 

  1.      Do not operate for another faction than the one you're working in, and do not work with someone in another faction than the one you are working in.


  1.      The above can only work with express permission of the head of each faction. Permission can and will be revoked at any time.


  1.      You are allowed to do independent work at any time.



 

When Vera arrived on the rooftop where she was to meet her contact, bag in tow, all she found was an envelope with her first and last legal name on it, instead of one of the multiple aliases everyone went by. There was also a sizable bag there, bulging.

Clutching her gun bag tighter, she looked around and searched the rooftop for any signs of police work. Cameras, people, microphones, anything that might explain this. Once she deemed the coast clear, she approached the envelope, slowly. Vera pulled her phone out and called her boss.

"I went to the rendezvous point, but all that's here is a duffel bag filled with _something_ and an envelope," she stated.

"What's on the envelope?"

"My name. Not even the alias I've been going by for the past few months, but my legal name."

She could tell her boss was furrowing her brow at this notion. "Is there–"

Vera cut her off. "There's no police around, no cameras, no mics. Bug free. It's... it's crazy. I don't get it."

"What's in the duffel bag?"

"Hang on."

Vera set her gun bag down and slipped her phone in her pocket to minimize the possibility of it falling off the tall building. She unzipped the bag and in it was what she least expected.

"Holy shit," she gasped.

Stacks of money. Stacks upon stacks. It was like looking into a money jungle. Just briefly looking at it you could tell that: (1) it was comprised of only $20 bills; (2) it was worth about $2 million dollars; and (3) whoever the contact was, they had a lot of money, and were asking a lot of Vera and the faction.

Vera pulled her phone back out. "It looks to be about $2 million in cash, all $20 bills."

"Anything else?"

She reached back in the bag for anything else, and her hand bumped something hard. Vera wrapped her hand around it and pulled it out, finding the object to be a walkie talkie; two, actually, when she reached her hand back in there. One was smaller, cheaper, lighter. The other appeared to be something military grade.

"Two walkie talkies of varying quality," Vera said, turning one over in her hand. "One of them looks like a cheaper model, but still higher end. $30 to $50, maybe. The other seems like it's military grade and would cost a pretty penny. A few hundred depending on the seller, I'm sure." She took a moment to scan the skyline, looking at each building, each roof, hoping this wasn't a set-up of some sort.

She sighed. This was certainly going to be a challenge. "Whoever it is," she said to her boss, "this isn't going to be an easy task."

Her boss was talking to someone else, a little way from the phone, and the conversation was barely audible.

"You find whoever this person is– I don't care if the email is encrypted! Go to Leckie, then, see if he can do something about it... If he's not here then you call him and you make him work on it!"

A door slammed. There was the sound of walking back to the phone and it being picked up. "You didn't hear that, did you?" Vera's boss asked.

"I don't know what you're talking about, Stella," Vera said, smiling dancing on her lips. She had opened the envelope, and in it contained a set of instructions and skimmed through it. "But I may have run into a bump."

"Oh?" Stella said.

Vera pinched the bridge of her nose. "It's asking me to break rule number 9," she replied.

 

  1.      Do not kill another assassin/hitman/hired killer/contract killer/etc.



 

Stella let out a "hmmm..." as she thought for a moment. A drawer could be heard being opened, closed, and a book placed on the desk that she sat at. Pages were turned for a moment before Stella started humming as she browsed through some lists.

"There was a clause added," she began, breaking the silence, "two months ago, saying that for $2 million or more, the rule could be broken."

Vera bit her lip. "So, this person is either extremely cautious, or they know our rules. What are the chances that the contact has our book?"

"A faction on the other side of town lost one of their own a couple months ago. What was his name... Oswald, or something? Said the book he always carried on him went missing."

"Didn't they also say it might have been an inside job?"

" _Might_ have been," Stella emphasized. "They still don't know. They think an off-duty cop killed him."

“There seems to be a slew of deaths that look like inside jobs,” Vera commented. “That’s a bit worrying. What if this is one?”

Stella groaned. “It won’t be, I’m telling you. And Oswald’s death only _looked_ like it. No one’s saying it was. Like I said, might have been a cop that was off-duty.”

"Or it was an inside job," Vera said. "An off-duty cop happened to be on the 20th floor where he was positioned?"

Stella chuckled. "God, you're paranoid. But in any case, we have the funds. What else does the letter ask?"

"For me to kill someone I'm assuming is one of us, because that's the only reason they paid this much."

"Who?" 

Vera's eyes darted over the paper again. "Um... Lena Riggi."

 

* * *

 

A few miles away, Lena Riggi was dealing with the same issue.

"Renée, I don't know if we should go through with this!" Lena exclaimed. "I _know_ it's $2 million, and I know we need the money, too–"

"We do," Renée interrupted. "Unfortunately, we do, and this is a contract we can't turn down. A clause was added a couple months back allowing this to happen."

"I know," Lena said. "It's just that... the other factions."

"What about them?"

Lena sighed. "Never mind, it's stupid–"

"You're our top hired hand. Nothing you can say is stupid."

"What will the other factions think?" Lena blurted out. "This doesn't happen, at all, and I'm concerned about what their thoughts on all this will be."

Renée was silent for a moment before replying. "I'm sure they'll understand. They have the book, they'll find the clause, and they can't interfere, even if they wanted to." She paused again. "You have to do it."

Lena knew that she had to, and she couldn't let her mind run wild with "what if's?" and other questions. She just couldn't. It cost her a close friend once, and she didn't want to let her emotions interfere again, so she'd have to go through with it. She'd get paid quarter of a million, she'd take that and the rest of the money she put away, quit the business for good, and live out the rest of herself life somewhere far away from here.

She was going to kill Vera Keller.

But the last rule, and most important rule of all, states:

 

  1.  Do not fall in love with one of our own, no matter if they're in your own faction, or someone else's. Romance is strictly prohibited. If one is found to be having an illicit relationship, they will be terminated. The definition of "terminate" is up to the faction leader, and must take into account the nature of the relationship.



 

There is an unsaid rule, initially a joke between newbies, but something the higher-ups found amusing and decided to add anyway.

 

  1.  Have fun and be yourself.



 

Many thanks to Ray Person.

 

* * *

 

Vera sat up on the roof, wind blowing through her hair as she sat, waiting for a call from Stella to tell her who the contact is. The way she looked, stern-faced with a sharp jaw that's soft around the edges, would make an excellent painting in this place.

She's what made Rule #10 so hard to follow for many people, men and women alike. Vera didn't much have an issue with the rule, because she couldn't find anyone she liked romantically in this faction or others. Robert Leckie came close, but Vera didn't feel that spark with him that he felt with her.

It's probably because she doesn't like guys, anyway. Not that it didn't stop Leckie from being awfully persistent, however, because he just didn’t know.

This led to a very public moment at home base when he had sidled up to Vera and asked, “do you want to go out?”, and why she didn't want to do anything with him, and that the rule didn't matter much anyway. She ended up spinning around and yelling in his face, "I'M A LESBIAN!"

Everyone drew silent as Vera's irritation stayed on her face and Leckie's became red.

"Well," he said, "sorry for bothering you." He shuffled off and left the room in a hurry, but not before running into the door because he wasn't looking where he was going. Vera fixed a piece of hair that was hanging in front of her face and went to her desk, researching any independent work that was filling that part of the database. Chatting started up again, and no one breathed a word of it for fear of getting two of their top operatives in trouble over Rule #10.

Probably not one of her finest moments, for she had a few, but it did make an entertaining story to tell girls she brought home from the bar around the corner. That didn't happen as often anymore, because she'd been taking on more jobs, but she did have fun when she could. But, not as much as before, unfortunately. Fun now for her was getting 10 hours of sleep and taking a nice, long shower. Fun was not falling asleep in your Chinese food after you cried your eyes out, way too drunk, singing along to the theme song of _Cheers_.

And this was a top operative.

"We all have our flaws," Vera would say. "Mine just involve passing out in food more times than the average drunk person."

Her phone ringing brought her out of the reverie she was in, and answered it. "So? Who's the contact?"

Stella sighed on the other end. "We don't know."

"You don't know?" Vera was surprised. Leckie find out anything about anyone, normally. "What do you mean you don’t know?"

"I mean that even with all the hacking and researching, Leckie couldn't pinpoint who or where this person is."

"Oh, that's fantastic!" Vera replied. "So how do we know for certain cops are involved? Or the FBI or anything?"

"We have our ties. Chuckler, Runner, Gunny... and others in different factions. But it's best if we just keep this here for now, between our two, in case anything happens."

"And _I'm_ the paranoid one," Vera pointed out. "That's what I've heard people call me."

Stella laughed. "Well, you _are_."

"I know, but that doesn't mean I want people going around and calling me that."

"You've dealt with it for this long."

"True." She paused a moment and looked down at the envelope again, noticing something else. "Wait, there's another paper here, in the envelope. I don't know how I didn't see it before."

"Well?"

Vera's eyes darted across the page, reading it out loud to Stella. "On the walkie talkies, you'll be on your own private channel. You can communicate with each other this way. The only way you'll be able to know where the other is located, is all up to you. However, the other has the location of your current position – aka, the meeting point – and may be on their way. Failure to carry out the mission to your full abilities..." she trailed off, reading and rereading the next lines.

"You still there, Vera?"

She cleared her throat. "Yeah. It says that, uh, failure to carry out the mission to your full abilities can and will lead to termination of the contract and the person in question. Money must be refunded in full." She sat the letter down. "Son of a bitch. The $2 million isn't just payment, it's collateral. If we fail, we forfeit the money. If we fail, we die. We're forced to kill the other person; there's no choice."

"Haven't seen anything like this before," Stella muttered. "Well, actually, there were a few hostage situations that you know about."

"Yeah, I was about to correct you," Vera remarked, "because I was someone in a hostage incident. _Twice_. As the hostage and _then_ as someone that had to carry out the contract."

"How are you about that?" Stella asked abruptly. "How've you been since then?"

"Still sore enough that I don't wanna fuckin' talk about it," Vera retorted. "I've told you not to bring it up, and here you are–"

"Vera, I–"

"Bringing it up again, like you're the psychiatrist you hired for me–"

"I'm sorry–"

"You better be," Vera said coldly. "Because I want to talk about it ever again. Not with you, not the psychiatrist, not with anyone."

Stella apologized. "Okay, all right, I'm sorry."

"Good. Apology accepted.”

Vera had to tell herself repeatedly how none of what had happened was her fault. That person being a bad person had nothing to do with her; they had always been like that. They were deceiving, conniving, and an absolutely deplorable human being.

Every moment where her psychiatrist told her that it’s not her fault like a shitty knock-off version of that scene from _Good Will Hunting._ Not that a great big hug from Robin Williams wouldn’t solve her problems, but it would help her a little bit.

Eventually, she stopped seeing the psychiatrist because they stopped helping her. Vera mistakenly let her guard down and her weakness was being taken advantage of. She wasn’t born yesterday, though, and waited for a contract to come in to take them out.

In the end, she didn’t wait for a contract, but made it look like an incredibly tragic accident: a beloved psychiatrist falling out the window of their own office. How sad. How upsetting for all the patients. Yeah, right. Vera knew they wanted to stop seeing them, but constant manipulation prevented them.

What she did was justice, and no one could convince her of otherwise. She didn’t like talking about her feelings to begin with, and being forced to for work didn’t help anyone. Now it ended with her worse off and scarred and someone dead.

Not like it was any different from what happened during a normal contract, minus her being worse off and scarred. 

But, hell, people have to die sometime, right?

 

* * *

 

"This is fucking insane!" Lena yelled over the phone. "This is ridiculous. I can't– have we ever had a contract like this?"

"Not to my knowledge," Renée replied. "Except for those situations that turned real messy, real fast."

Lena huffed. "I know exactly what you're alluding to, and I'm going to change the subject. So, if I fail, then we lose the money and I die, too."

"Yeah."

"Well," Lena said, rubbing the back of her neck, "I've always wanted to know how much I was worth. I guess I’m worth $2 million, a military walkie talkie, and a small walkie talkie."

"And those aren't cheap," Renée informed her. "The military ones. I would know. Couple hundred dollars, and they have an incredible range."

"Which is?"

"You wouldn't believe me if I told you."

"Try me."

"Based on the picture you sent and from what I've gathered on my own knowledge of the model, it can reach anywhere from 250,000 to 350,000 square feet."

"Can I get a visual?"

"If I had to guess? At least four to six football fields in length."

Lena's mouth dropped open. "You're shitting me."

"That's roughly, so it's not exact."

"What about in width?"

"Probably a few more, I'm sure."

Lena looked around at all the buildings around her. There's a very good chance she could see her target from here, and that meant she could see her. She dropped down behind the roof access door, and faced the billboard located conveniently right behind the building.

 _I guess living in a city_ does _have its perks,_ she thought.

Now that she thought about it, this whole situation was pretty shitty, though others wouldn’t see it as such. She's the top operative of this faction, so there's no way she was going to die. She'd find the target, pull the trigger, and keep the $2 million for the faction. Would she get the other $2 million as well? But in the off-chance she did die... what would happen? Well, she'd die, obviously, but was her life really worth that money? And if she didn't want to do it, because this target _had_ to be good if they were being put against each other, she'd die. In the two outcomes of failure, she'd die. In the two outcomes of winning, she kept her life and got a quarter of a million dollars.

It's a 50-50 chance, and she couldn't say no to it, even if she wanted to.

"So, it sounds like I've got no choice," Lena lamented. 

"Oh, Lena," Renée said, "there never was a choice to begin with."

 

* * *

 

Assassins are often chosen for their resilience, perseverance, tenacity, and a slew of other things that make them the best at their job. They do, however, tend to be highly stubborn and have an incredible sense of self-preservation, which has led to many contracts being run out on and dropped because the sense of danger went past their threshold.  Most people want to live, and it's true that assassins do as well, especially when you're staring down someone's gun and they're staring down yours. Or when someone's knife is up against your throat, because they decided to fight back when you got too careless. Or when the person you've been hired to kill is a close friend or family member that isn't as good as you think.

Sometimes, all that there's left to do is run.

Except when you can't, and you have to pull the trigger anyway. And you have to let yourself get a scar on your neck so you can turn around and beat the living shit out of whoever decided was foolish enough to try and kill _you_. And you have to complete the contract.

You have to. Your job depends on it. No one will ever know it was you, except for your conscious. Your feelings of guilt. It's the reason why you didn't go to your friend's funeral in the first place. You said the grief was too much. You were close friends and couldn't bear to see them.

Lena just didn’t want the job to go sour like the one that ruined everything.

 _I'm sorry, John,_ Lena thought as her finger hovered over the "Delete Contact" button. Tears welled up in her eyes again as she told herself over and over to do it. Was she ready for it? To do this? To finally let go of him, after all this time? Would she finally be strong and find the strength inside her to move on? _No,_ she thought again as she closed the window. _Not today. Later, sometime later. Just not today._

But she couldn't think about that right now. Not here. She wiped any tears she may have had away and pulled herself together a bit more. Lena had to focus on the task at hand, and had to go through with it, no matter the cost.

She pulled the envelope out and looked at the address that Vera Keller was currently at. 121 Prestige Road. Vera wouldn't be there still, most likely, but she could always head her off and make this quick. But Lena, if she was going through with this, wanted to have some fun first before taking her target out. That’s how she was a kid, too: playing with her food before tearing into it.

Pulling a pen out of the gun bag (for one always had to be prepared for anything), Lena took the papers out of the envelope, stuffed them in her pocket, and wrote something on the inside of the flap for her to find. She loaded the walkie talkie up and threw the $2 million bag on the other roof with the billboard and hoped to god no one would find it before another operative showed up to bring it back to home base. She texted her boss the location.

Lena stuck the envelope in the door to the roof on the way out, ensuring she'd read it when she got out there. That's what she had hoped, at least. She slung her gun bag over her shoulder and walked hurriedly down the stairs, taking those instead of the elevator because, although the gun bag was actually an instrument carrying case, she didn't want to look too suspicious. Not like she'd get looked at twice with a gun bag anyway, because America (sadly).

Going out the back door, Lena stayed in the alleyway and used her phone to check and see how far away 121 Prestige was from her. It was a few blocks away, which meant that if she didn't hurry, the game would end before it even began. Exiting the alleyway, she blended into the crowd, walking a block or so before turning off into another alleyway there and through a conveniently unlocked back door – here's to incompetent maintenance workers – and made her way to yet another stairwell to take up her position.

If her thighs weren't toned by the end of this whole charade with as many flights as she was going up, Lena was going to be awfully pissed.

Getting into the roof proved a minor challenge, but nothing she couldn't handle. A simple picking of the lock would suffice, and presto, it was now wide open. But because this building still had other tall buildings around it, she had to be careful, for if someone looked out their window and saw someone aiming a huge gun, they would call the police. Mainly because "holy shit there's a person with a large and illegal-looking gun out on the roof of this building and I'm afraid they might kill someone."

Or they wouldn't, because they were oddly apathetic. It's the city; they've probably seen weirder.

Luckily, taking up a spot to the left of the stairwell entrance was perfect cover, because all the other buildings were shorter, she couldn't be seen behind the entrance. Lena quickly got to work setting up, which didn't take long, as skilled as she was. Soon enough, she was adjusting her scope, and watching Vera Keller come through the roof access door a few buildings away, clutching the envelope and looking around cautiously. 

 _Rookie mistake,_ Lena thought.

 

* * *

 

Vera knew it was a bad idea to go directly to where it said Lena Riggi would be, but she had at least hoped that she would have been able to cut her off on the way here. End it quickly, end it quietly. But now it was looking like that wouldn't be the case.

She flipped the envelope up, Lena's own name on it crossed out and her name neatly jotted down above it.

Written on the inside of the flap was the words: "You're it."

The moment she looked up, a bullet whizzed quickly past her ear and she dropped to the ground, quickly crawling behind the roof entrance. The only issue was in the haste she had dropped her gun bag.

She reached around and made a move to grab it, but another shot pierced the ground to the left of her hand and she pulled it back, slamming her back up against the metal.

 _Okay, so it's a game she wants,_ Vera thought. _If it's a game she wants, it's a game she's gonna fuckin' get._

Vera pulled the walkie talkie off her pants and tuned to the private channel, the name of which was listed in tape on the back.

"Hey, this is Vera, hoping that Lena's walkie talkie is on so I can have a chat with her."

Lena's device rang out with Vera's voice a few buildings away, and she pulled it off her hip as she continued to lay in wait. Though she was a target, Lena had to admit she was pretty cute.

"Aren't you supposed to say 'over' when you're done talking?" she asked. "Over."

"I don't give a shit. Over."

"So, do you, or don't you? Over."

"I'm over this whole charade already, _Lena_ , so let's talk for a moment, mainly about why I'm 'it,'" Vera said.

Lena shrugged, knowing Vera couldn't see her. "What's there to talk about? I tagged you, and now you're it."

"So, I'm supposed to run and hide as you chase me," Vera began, "until I double-back somewhere and leave a message that you're it, and then I chase you down as you run and hide. Is that it?"

Vera pouted. "You make it sound so boring like that!" she said in mock disappointment. "But yeah, if you wanna take the piss out of the whole thing, it boils down to that."

"I didn't know we were five," Vera scoffed.

Vera shrugged again. "Being a kid was fun. You could play Cops and Robbers and be the successful robber every time. Now that I think about it, that was very telling for my career path, I believe."

On the road beneath them, there was a very loud and prolonged honk before the crashing and grating of metal struck. Lena jumped a bit and whipped her head around to the source of the noise, but looked back as quickly as she had looked away.

It was too late, though, as the door across the way was closing and Vera's gun bag was gone.

"Son of a bitch!" Lena cursed out loud, hurrying to dismantle the gun properly and get back on her way.

She took the stairs down again, 25 total floors, almost breaking an ankle in the process, but she made it down unscathed. Going out the back door again, she almost nailed a kid running by in the face.

"Watch it!" the kid yelled, who couldn't have been any older than fourteen.

Another kid – Lena assumed this was his friend – ran past, slamming into Lena but kept running on. They rounded the corner and were gone, like they never quite existed.

"Hooligans," Lena muttered, suddenly feeling like her mother and shaking that feeling off. Too old too fast. Maybe this was the universe telling her not to have any kids of her own. As she leaned down to grab her gun bag, she noticed a sheet of paper on the ground that hadn't been there before. In fact, it was the envelope with Vera Keller's name written on it, crossed out and with Lena's written above it. 

And on the inside flap of the envelope read: "Tag, now _you’re_ it."

 

* * *

 

Vera decided to let any worry Lena might be having mingle inside her for a bit as she went off to find a place to set up shop for an extended period. The building couldn’t be too short, because Lena could be in any other tall building and see her easily. Being in the tallest building is probably what she expects to happen.

But the rules never said they had to stay in the city, did they?

To let any worries marinate inside Lena, Vera decided to go to the city outskirts and just stay at home. She wasn’t getting overconfident in her abilities, per se (even though she had every reason to), but she had put a tracker in the envelope she had delivered to Lena that she could easily check on her phone, so if she got too close, Vera would know. If Lena got within 500 feet of Vera’s house, an alarm would go off and she would be out.

As Vera went to her fridge and pulled a wine cooler out, she made a toast to Lena. “Here’s hoping she doesn’t catch on,” she muttered, before popping the cap off and taking a drink. Now, where was that leftover pizza…

 

* * *

 

Lena took all the back alleys and shortcuts she could to reach home base, where she was pretty sure she’d be safe, unless Vera was watching closely. She punched in the passcode after checking over her shoulders and shielding the keypad. With her shirt, she wiped her fingerprints off as best as she could as the heavy metal door slowly opened. Lena slid inside and grabbed the handle on the other side, tugging it closed. As strong as she was, the door still took a hot second to close. It’s solid titanium. It happens.

With a grunt from Lena and a hiss from the door as it closed, it sealed shut. She wiped her sweaty hands off on her pants and faced the solid wall in front of her that blended in with the room. Anyone that somehow happened to meander their way in (on accident or on purpose) would be stuck with nowhere to go in a 9ft-by-9ft room with walls made of cement. Only people that had been here before would know where to look for the next keypad, or knock.

Positioning herself in the exact middle of the entrance, Lena walked forward until she was a foot away from the wall parallel to the entrance. She took five steps to the right, three back, and one left before turning to face the wall where she ended up. Knocking twice on the spot with the smallest chink in it, a small panel slide up and exposed the keypad she needed. She put in another code and leaned in for the retinal scan. The blue beam slid up and down her eye swiftly before disappearing and the panel slamming shut. The wall directly behind her now showed a slight crack in it, and when Lena walked over and pushed on it, it opened more. She stepped through and closed it back behind her with a hard push to make sure it sealed properly. Turning back and facing the open space before her, she knew she was home.

Their home base, known by all as “The Cove,” doubled as a base of operations and quite literally a home. Some of the members lived here because it was easiest to live and work in the same place for them. It was accommodating to them as well, with multiple spacious bedrooms with their own bathrooms for each person that was part of that faction. You didn’t have to come in every day, as this wasn’t your regular 9-to-5 job, of course, but it was encouraged that you came in three to four times per week. Given that gas prices were getting more and more expensive and some lived some ways out of the city, it was easier to just come and live at The Cove. It was basically a Hollywood mansion if you put the top floor at ground level and the rest was underground.

That means the first floor was bedrooms. The rooms were all identical but everyone was allowed to make their own personal touches, within reason. Now they couldn’t have windows, of course, but that didn’t stop some of them from having hyper-realistic paintings of windows and scene sprawling “outside” painted on the windows.

And by “some of them,” that means “one of them.”

And that one person was Ray Person, who happened to be sitting in the lounge area in the middle of the floor and right off the entrance, bag of chips open on his chest as he texted someone. When he heard the door seal back, he looked over and saw Lena and grinned.

“Hey, it’s the Rigster!” he exclaimed, swinging his legs off the couch and getting up. He forgot the chips in his excitement and they dropped to the floor. Lena’s eyes flashed to them quickly and back up at Ray, who saw this and went to pick them up and put them on the table. Ray was never known to be a wholly clean person. She rolled her eyes and walked over, dropping her bag – carefully – in the nearest chair as she opened her arms and braced herself for Ray’s hug.

Ray was one of those people: always excited to see his friends and gave huge hugs when he saw them. Not that this was a bad thing exactly, but sometimes people were just not in the mood. He had caught Lena in such bad moods before and that ended up giving him a scar just above his left eyebrow that has since faded over the years, but it’s still noticeable if you’re actually looking for it.

He took Lena in a bear hug and held her like that for a few moments. Ray only broke away when Lena’s grip loosened and she patted his back a couple of times and laughed a little nervously. Sometimes it was hard for Ray to take a hint, as her past history with him shows, but he was able to get it this time.

“My bad,” he laughed sheepishly. “How’ve you been? I haven’t seen you since one of my aliases went into Witness Protection.”

Lena shrugged. “It’s been okay. I’m being paid $2 million to kill one of us in a different faction and if I don’t, I die, either by the contract’s hand or by the target’s,” she said nonchalantly.

The nonchalant tone concerned Ray a little bit.

His eyes widened. “Shit dawg, that sounds intense. Like, kinda more intense than me having to fake my death to get _out_ of witness protection.”

“It kind of is, in all fairness. But you need to tell me how you did that sometime after all this blows over.”

“And there’s no way to get out of it?” he asked. “No loophole or any shit like that? I know we have a lot, but we take this ‘don’t kill thy brother, sister, or gender nonconforming sibling’ shit pretty seriously.”

“None that Renée could find,” Lena said, sitting down on one of the couches. She figured it was the one Ray was on previously considering the moment she sat down, she heard the _crunch_ of a potato chip underneath her, but she’d deal with that later.

Ray sat down in a chair next to her, grabbing the bag of chips off the table as he did so. “Well, that sucks majorly, man. What are you gonna do? Hide out here for a bit until she finds you? Let her worry about where you’ve gone?”

“Well, that’s what she’s doing to me,” Lena sighed. “Letting me get worked up because I’m it now.”

“Like a game of tag?”

“Apparently.”

“Sick.” Lena gave him a look and Ray cleared his throat. “Or you know, it would be if your life wasn’t on the line,” he said.

Lena nodded. “Sure.”

“You think she’s waiting it out, too? At home somewhere, or their faction’s home base?”

“That’s what I’m doing. And because she is _also_ the top of that faction, she’s probably doing the same.” Lena reached over to the chip bag and Ray held it out for her. You knew you were a close friend of his when Ray would actually hold the bag out for you and not pull it back towards him. Sometimes he’d jerk it back towards him as a joke before letting you take a few.

Hard to believe that he’s ranked in the top 10 deadliest people in the faction.

Ray, with a mouth full of chips, asked, “How long do you think it’ll last?”

Lena sighed. “Who knows? One of us eventually has to go looking for the other, one of us has to catch the other with their guard down, and one of us has to pull the trigger and kill the other. This could go on for like, a few days at the least.” She went from a sitting to a laying down position, her hand under her head as she stared up at the ceiling. “Weeks, months, or we spend the rest of our lives running for no reason.”

“You know, that’s cool and deep and depressing as shit and all,” Ray said, “but I was talking about how long _you’ll_ last sitting here doing fuck-all.”

She laughed. “Your guess is as good as mine. I know I can’t stay in one place for too long, and so does everyone else.” Lena got up again, stretching her arms above her. “I’m gonna go take a shower. While I do that, _you_ start a betting pool on how long I’ll last. Should give us all something to do.”

Ray cheered. “ _Finally,_ I get to do that again! And Brad can’t fuckin’ yell at me because you said it was okay.” He tossed the chips on the table, spilling some on the table and floor in the process, and bolted for the stairs, yelling, “Hey guys! I’ve got an idea you’re _all_ going to be on board for!”

Shaking her head and smiling, Lena walked off towards her room down on of the many hallways on this first floor. She’d been down here many times, to her own and to the one across the hall from her, and yet even now, a long time after it had happened, she still found herself stopping in front of his door, lingering for a moment before turning back and going into her own room.

It never got easier. She figured that it never will.

Everything was as she left it in her room the last time she was here. Admittedly, it had been a long time; a few months, give or take. Bed was still made, dust collecting on a couple shelves. The smell was stale and she hadn’t put the framed pictures away yet. Lena considered herself lucky that no one came in and found them, but if they did, she was lucky that no one told Renée.

She walked over to the pictures that lined the shelves to the right of the door. The one closest to the bed was the one she treasured most, because it carried the most memories. That, _and_ the one next to it. Just looking at them made her want to cry.

Her wedding pictures. Her very quiet, private wedding. Lena took a moment to herself and thought about it all.

 

* * *

 

 _“_ _You new here, too?” the man had asked. He had a noticeable accent, so Lena figured he was from the northeast._

_“Why do you ask?” she asked, sitting down next to him. “You may be new, but I’ve been here for around two years now.”_

_He paled. “Oh! That’s, uh, that’s my bad,” he said, clearing his throat._

_“I’m just giving you shit,” Lena smirked. “I do it with everyone. So, where are you from? New York?”_

_He smiled. “Born there, but I’ve been living in Jersey. The accent that obvious?”_

_She smiled back. “A bit.”_

_“John,” he said, holding his hand out._  

_“Lena,” she replied, shaking it._

 

_“You got eyes on the target?” Lena asked over the walkie talkie. “Over.”_

_“I do.”_

_Lena raised an eyebrow. “How? They’re inside, and you’re on the opposite side of the building.”_

_“Maybe they’re not the target I’m looking at.”_

_She picked up her binoculars and looked a few rooftops away at John, who was staring right back at her. He waved, and she waved back, flipping him off afterwards._

_“Whoa, okay!” he laughed. “I don’t think that was necessary.”_

_“Then do your fucking job, Basilone, and I might not have to,” she teased._  

_“Yes, ma’am!”_

 

_The back of the restaurant, though quiet, was always seen as an incredibly conspicuous place to be. Illicit affairs and meetings always went down back here. Unless the restaurant was full and you had no other place to sit, in which case you still looked incredibly suspicious._

_“I can’t help but feel like we’re having a very illegal meeting back here,” Lena joked._

_John smiled and shrugged. “I mean, we are, technically. If anyone catches us back here, we’re in_ very _deep shit.”_

_“And yet we’re doing it anyway.” Lena leaned forward. “Why?”_

_He thought about it for a moment. “I like to think it’s because you can’t turn down such a nice guy like myself.”_

_“Maybe I’m just desperate.”_

_“If you were desperate, you have accepted Ray’s offers by now.”_

_“Well…” Lena was quick to disagree, but she couldn’t really argue with him. Ray, the blind fool, couldn’t take no for an answer. He’d accept it, and then a few days later, here he comes again with, “Hey, Lena! Dinner Friday night?” or “Wanna go see that really shitty horror movie sequel that just came out? It’s supposed to be_ super _gory.” She constantly wondered what it would take for him to knock it off. “I suppose so,” Lena said to John, neither confirming it nor denying it._  

_“I’m taking that as a ‘yes,’” John said, taking a sip of his wine._

 

_“I don’t know why you keep taking all these dangerous contracts,” Lena said, dabbing at one of John’s many wounds with hydrogen peroxide._

_He winced. “The bigger the danger, the bigger the payoff.” John turned and looked at her. “We need the money, you know that.”_

_“Keep your voice down,” Lena hissed, then sighed as John turned away again. “I know we do, believe me. We still need more for that beachfront property, and then there’s plane tickets, moving costs, breaking our employee contracts and paying_ that _fee…”_

_“Everything is just more and more money,” John said. “God, I can’t fuckin’ wait until we get to leave. Then you can meet my family and I can meet yours. And when we move, we’re going to make new friends, and have so much money that we’ll be able to live comfortably for the rest of our days. Get a dog or two, get married, have a big family—”_

_Lena set the cotton ball down. “Hold on,” she said, confused. “We’ve never talked about having a family.”_

_John turned and looked at her, equally confused. “We haven’t?” he asked, raising an eyebrow. Lena shook her head. “Huh. Could’ve thought I did. Maybe I dreamt that…”_

_She hit him lightly on the arm as he started to zone out in his thoughts and he bounced back. “Were you going to bring this up to me at some point?” Lena asked. “We’ve known each other for a year, been dating for eight months, and_ you _are imagining us with a family out on the beach. You could at least propose the idea first.”_

_“I planned on it,” John said, almost smug. He turned away. “Check the end table.”_

_“Will I find something to use that will knock some sense into you?” Lena laughed, pushing herself back on the bed and stretching herself over towards the table. She opened the second drawer and found—_

_“Condoms,” she deadpanned. “How charming.”_

_John reddened. “Wait, hold on—”_

_Lena picked the box up and examined it further. “They’re ribbed, though, so I guess that’s good for me…”_

_“Check the second drawer!” he exclaimed as she put the box back and closed the drawer, reaching for the second one. Upon opening this one, she found it._

_She gasped quietly. A ring. She took the box out and slid back next to John._

_“Real diamonds,” he said, almost whispering. “That cost a pretty penny, but it was out of my own savings I put away for a time. Get interest and all. I’ve been trying to figure out when a good time to propose would be.” John shrugged. “Guess now’s as good a time as any.”_

_“But, why?” Lena stammered._

_“I had to do the most and the best for my best girl,” he smiled. “I knew from the day I met you that I wanted to marry you. I’m glad you never took Ray up on any of his dates, even if we were hitting a rough patch or two.”_

_He took a deep breath before continuing. “And like you said, I keep taking more and more dangerous missions, but it’s for us. It’s for our future. You keep telling me how much you want out because of how long you’ve been here. This path has run its course and you want no more of it. I’ve been doing this since before I came here, and I’ve wanted out for the longest time, too. I got to thinking earlier that I didn’t want to die without being able to call you my wife.”_

_Lena was at a loss for words, something that didn’t happen often in her life. The only other time that happened involved Ray a few months back when he had too many tequila shots, tried to serenade Lena, and then he threw up on her shoes. But this was the best kind of being at a loss for words. Her heart skipped a beat when she heard John ask, “Will you marry me?” as she continued to stare at the diamond ring in shock._

_“Will you marry me?” he repeated. Lena nodded, and he took the box from her, breaking her focus and she whipped her head to face him._

_They maintained eye contact the entire time he took the ring out of the box, set the box down, and put it on her ring finger._

_“There,” he breathed. “That wasn’t so hard now, was it?”_

 

_“Nate can keep a secret, can’t he?”_

_“Well, yeah, but he also follows the rules, too. How do we know he won’t say anything?”_

_“He saw us feeding each other sushi four blocks away like, three weeks ago. He would have said something by now.”_

_“Hmm… true. But put him under ‘Maybe,’ anyway.”_

_Trying to figure out who you could really trust was getting more and more difficult, considering you wanted some of your friends to be there. Even though they were friends, how did one know if you could really trust them? They’ve seen looks from some, when John put his hand on Lena’s knee, or when Lena would pick an eyelash off his face. Looks given when there was a lingering touch or two. Brief looks given in moments of “just passing through” when John and Lena would be talking in hushed whispers in the corner. Anyone can be an enemy, and everyone has the potential to be someone that ends up shooting you in the back._

_However, everyone, to some degree, knew about John and Lena. Some, like Ray, knew absolutely nothing and were incredibly oblivious to it. Others, like Andy Haldane, knew everything, because he played wingman for them both and was trying to get them together in the first place after John confessed to him how much he liked Lena._

_“If I’m not at your wedding,” he said to John during a late-night mission, “then I will pull Eddie out of hiding and have him show you why he was the pride of his own Maryland faction.”_

_“What did he do?” John asked, unbothered._

_Andy paused for a moment. “Let’s just say there’s a reason he takes the eleventh rule to heart.”_

_John was now very,_ very _scared._

 

 _Haldane’s name was the first on the list of guests. Ray’s was the second._  

_“Now that’s just cruel,” Lena said. “We can’t do that to him.”_

_“And? Maybe he’ll lay off now. You’re friends anyway, so this shouldn’t be too bad. He’ll try and find someone else at a bar later, I’m sure. Much safer,” John reasoned._

_And that’s all the convincing it took Lena._

_It was a small and private affair, but Andy and Ray went as all-out as they possibly could, with a slightly disappointed Ray but overall overjoyed for the happy couple. Lots of rice was thrown and lots of pictures were taken. Lena was pretty sure the phrase “pleased as punch” was used by Andy, but she couldn’t be too sure, because they all got hammered immediately after and delayed the honeymoon plans by a day._

_Lena said she was taking a short vacation to visit family for the 4 th of July holidays, whereas John said he just wanted to get drunk for a couple days because he hadn’t partied in a very long time._

_If anyone’s ever been told that the honeymoon period doesn’t last long, they were right._

 

_It had been a month to the day since they got married when Lena got the news._

_Ray burst in, covered in blood and shaken up badly. Everyone there jumped up to move up elsewhere and to get him some water, a towel, a drink._

_“What happened?” Renée asked, rushing in from downstairs, bringing a first aid kit with her._

_Ray’s eyes were wide and his hands were shaking badly. He couldn’t think straight and he couldn’t find the words to explain what happened, but what had happened with this:_

_The contract had gone horribly wrong. The person that had hired them turned out to be a couple of teenagers with a lot of money who wanted to kill someone for fun, someone that wouldn’t be missed and they could get away with it._

_Haldane died first. Ray was standing behind him, complaining about the cold and “how much longer are we going to have to wait for these fuckers to show up” when a shot rang out in the black, frozen night and suddenly Ray’s face was covered in blood and Andy was dead on the ground._

_John shoved Ray back and told him to run, to get back to home base, as John ran into the nearest alleyway and tried to get a vantage point. Ray ran as he heard the teens run into after John, and the next thing he heard over his own panicked breathing was multiple gunshots and the boys whooping and hollering._

_He didn’t look back as he ran, ran, ran all the way to home base ten blocks away and taking multiple shortcuts and hiding, waiting to see if the boys would come after him next. It was hard for Ray to hear anything but the blood rushing in his ears and his heartbeat racing. Adrenaline pumped through his body as he kept running and he didn’t crash fully until he was able to be calmed down at home base._

_Nate was sent out to retrieve the bodies and so was Lena, but he pulled her aside and told her, “I’ll handle it.” He knew and “I don’t care that you’re married,” that’s what he told her. Nate told Lena to go take a shower and get some rest, “I’ll take care of everything, don’t worry about it.”_

_He turned to Brad, who was showering and now came in only wearing sweatpants. “Brad, you and me. Let’s go. Finish getting dressed.”_

_“Iceman never relaxes,” he muttered, turning right around and heading back to his room._

_Nate looked back at Lena. “Do what I said. Don’t worry about it. We’ve got it all covered.”_

_And so, she went to her room. She didn’t worry._

_The last time Lena had cried this hard was when her childhood dog died when she was in her sophomore year of high school. Or was it when her best friend died in a car accident a year later? She couldn’t remember anymore; her thoughts were a mess and she couldn’t think straight. Lena thought the shower would help, but all it did was help her cry and cover up the sobbing she was doing._

_When she got out of the shower, she cried more. She locked her door, curled up in bed, and cried harder. The next morning when she woke up, Lena couldn’t bear to look at the few pictures of her and John that lined her shelves. She simply got dressed, packed a suitcase of clothes and her work computer, and left to go across the country and start some independent work, to make a name of herself there._  

_Two months ago, she came back. She stayed in hotels and never went into her room, afraid to face the pictures again and where everything happened to them, where her life changed. She didn’t want to pass by his room, either. In fact, just coming into home base every other day was hard enough. Lena’s hand lingered every time she pushed the wall door open. Slowly but surely, it got easier to come in, but the grief and sadness she felt never left._

 

* * *

 

Lena was laying on her side now, facing the pictures on the shelves. Every little moment with her and John, together, she thought of them. Now she found herself crying as hard as she was the day she lost him.

She never even asked what they did with John’s body, with Andy’s body. Lena knew they got funerals, and knew that now they rested easy. That was part of why she left: she didn’t want anything to do with those funerals. The grief was just too much. But she couldn’t help but keep blaming herself and wondering if it all would have happened if she hadn’t met John, if she hadn’t said “yes” when he asked her out on that first date and everything snowballed from there.

Guilt was a horrible thing, and is a lot like kudzu: it grows and grows, and covers everything in its path. It’s hard to get rid of it and never seems to go away. After a while, you can’t figure out quite where it took root and that makes it impossible to destroy.

Someday, Lena hopes, she will be able to burn it all down.

But for now, she had to do something. As she dosed and slowly slipped into sleep, she had to go searching for Vera. She would turn it around and make her _know_ that she was going to be tagged. 

The next day, Lena was up before everyone else and left right away, knowing exactly what was to be done. She was going to set up a few blocks down from home base, before the city outskirts, and she was glad that Ray had given her an air horn for her birthday some time back.

If she was going to go through with this, she’d do it for John.

 

* * *

 

Vera didn’t want to admit that she’d fallen asleep on the couch cradling a Smirnoff Ice bottle and tortilla chips at her feet, but no one was perfect. She spent a good chunk of last night researching Lena in the database, reading about what dazzling things she’d done in her career. Some thoughts that passed through her head was that she was pretty attractive, but she convinced herself that was the alcohol talking. One thing did puzzle her:

The “Connections” tab. Only one name was listed, and it was someone named John Basilone, who had a “deceased” written in parentheses next to his name. Vera felt like she might be able to use that. She hoped to whatever god there was that Lena hadn’t done the same and dug deep into her past.

What she did, however, that haunted her so, didn’t have anything to do with anyone that was a contract killer.

When she was so harshly woken up, she thought it was her smoke alarm, not the sound of an air horn being blasted from her walkie talkie.

She jumped up and ran towards it, snatching it off the kitchen counter and shouting into it, “What the fucking fuck are you doing!”

“Hello, Vera Keller,” Lena said in a sickly-sweet voice. “This is your wake-up call, and letting you that you have been tagged.”

As Vera wiped the sleep from her eyes, she said, “But I tagged _you_ , what, yesterday?”

Her reply came in the form of a bullet through her front window, shattering the pane and sending glass all over the carpet. Vera ducked behind her counter in case a bullet came her way.

“You know, there seems to be a theme of me hiding and you shooting the shit out of everything around me,” Vera commented, exasperated. Why hadn’t the alarm gone off to let her know she was near? Maybe she was some ways away. Maybe she had left the envelope elsewhere.

“What’s the most you’ve ever lost?”

Vera was confused. “What?”

“What’s the most you’ve ever lost?” Lena repeated. “In your life. What have you lost that ruined you?”

“I’d have to think about it,” Vera stalled, knowing the answer right away, but it wasn’t like she was going to share it. “There’s been a lot that’s happened in my life, so I’d have to rank all tragedies, and that would take some time.”

Lena huffed. “You have one hour.”

“What happens if I don’t tell you? Am I gonna die like your precious John Basilone?”

There was a brief and heavy pause before a bullet zipped through the wall and passed right in front of Vera’s face, lodging itself in the wall directly to her left. Another one came through the wall and took a piece of her hair with it into the wall as she shrieked.

“Don’t you fucking _dare_ talk about him,” Lena growled. “That’s going to ensure a slow and painful death on your end.”

Vera scoffed. “Oh, I’m shaking in my boots,” she mocked. “Please. I’m not scared of you.”

“You should be.” 

“How cliché of you to say.”

“In any case, if you don’t tell me what’s the most you’ve ever lost…” Lena started, peering down through her scope from the abandoned house directly across the street. “If you don’t tell me, then I’m going to make this game end very quick, and I’m going to kill you, right here, right now.”

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading! Please leave a kudos if you liked it. Comments are also welcome.
> 
> Be on the lookout for the next part of this series. It should come in the following weeks.


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